a dude who runs a school, i guess they call these cats headmasters or principals or deans. i tend to call them assholes or fuckheads. in any case, one of these intellectual midgets was just featured in the local paper. it seems he doesn't feel that the library at his school should contain books. 20,000 of them being donated, disregarded. he said that the computer is to the book as the book was to the scroll. someone should tell this nimrod that analogies are no longer used on sat's.

wow. a library without books. books, they want us to believe, are a thing of the past. even the term library, they intone, is obsolete. speaking of obsolete, remember meredith on the zone? he was a librarian, a lover of books, and, so said his society, obsolete. but yes, library ain't the word anymore. learning center is in. computers. computers. and more computers.

but, can you get a high from touching a computer screen? can you lie down, book beside you, as you bundle yourself under the covers on a cold night? can you take a computer with you to the toilet, as you order up a number 2? (supersize those fries for me please!) the book is your one friend as you sit on the bus. you can walk down the street with it, sit in a cafe with it, read it while you are doing the laundry, as you wait for your pizza.

a book has a smell, a soul, a charm, that a screen will never have. yes, you can put the words of a book on a screen, but the experience of the book itself can not be duplicated. yes, we should get what we can out of computers, but not at the expense of the book, a wonderful creation, perhaps the greatest creation of modern man.

to anyone who has ever touched a book and felt its warmth, this man's plan is a fucking crime.

but, i'll say this. when this shithead is dead and gone, some kid will pick up a book and discover neruda or trumbo or heller or zinn or hughes or emma goldman for the first time. they will sit and lie and cry and laugh and smile as they discover their words.

and they will not have heard of this man.

come to think of it, i've forgotten his name already.

in fact, i never even knew it.